X800 GTO² to X850 XT BIOS Mod

[ShadowFlare]

Yeah that's the GTO2 right down to the heatsink..... I've heard the GTO2 referred to as Fireblade so my guess is there will be confusion over this. Nice price for directron but sometimes they charge a bunch for shipping.

Well, even if it is considered as a Fireblade card, it would still be a GTO2 Fireblade, not a GTO Fireblade, still different.

 

[Unregistered]

a new place to buy these cards

 

[Unregistered]

a new place to buy these cards
http://newsite.pagecomputers.com/st...ategory_name=32g32c302s1287&product_id=882430

it was $195.00 a day ago

 

[Dr.D]

Damn 71.6 watts is cutting it close to 75 watts. Stupid Dell

EDIT I found this article that says WAY more:
http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q4/radeon-x850xt/index.x?pg=12

 

[Unregistered]

Most X800 GTO Cards Can't Be Unlocked

HKEPC has a review up on the HIS Radeon X800 GTO and this card uses R480 core and 1.6ns Samsung memories. However, this card cannot be unlocked from 12 to 16 pipelines using the BIOS flashing method and sadly most X800 GTO cards that are hitting the retail now cannot be unlocked. So far only Sapphire X800GTO cards like the Ultimate and Fireblade editions using the X800 GTO² (R480) core can be successfully unlocked and from what we heard, X800 GTO² is only made exclusively for Sapphire. Don't rush out and grab a X800 GTO card because most likely you can't unlocked it. ATi has changed method of identifying and locking from 2ID to 4ID so it will be more difficult to alter the BIOS or perform hard mod.


Is that true?

 

[BlackPearl]

Damn 71.6 watts is cutting it close to 75 watts. Stupid Dell

EDIT I found this article that says WAY more:
http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q4/radeon-x850xt/index.x?pg=12

Those are full system figures - the Xbitlabs figures are for the graphics card only.

 

[HousERaT]

this guy over at xtremesystems claims to have a GTO2 that goes over 600 on the core with stock cooling.... not sure I believe it though.....
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=75920

 

[Unregistered]

Well, even if it is considered as a Fireblade card, it would still be a GTO2 Fireblade, not a GTO Fireblade, still different.

wrong.
Fireblade and GTO2 are 2 different cards.
Look at Sapphires HP..... There is no Fireblade using a GTO2 (aka mechanically unlocked 480).
Fireblade is Fireblade and GTO2 is GTO2. Simple as that.

 

[Derektm]

Well.... So far mine hits 520 core / 600 memory stock cooling. Card is idleing 44c.

If I try to go for 540 core, the computer locks up and artifacts and I have to restart. Is this a bad card? I didn't try any benchmarking at the 540 speed. It just locked up after a few seconds. Still was idleing 44c-45c.

I could RMA this one and order another one. I want to make sure I get a good one for this price because this is what's going to have to last me till next year.

Wow.......won't even bench at 507... locks up my computer.... the mouse can move for a few seconds...then pc beeps and I have to restart it.

 

[HousERaT]

Well.... So far mine hits 520 core / 600 memory stock cooling. Card is idleing 44c.

If I try to go for 540 core, the computer locks up and artifacts and I have to restart. Is this a bad card? I didn't try any benchmarking at the 540 speed. It just locked up after a few seconds. Still was idleing 44c-45c.

I could RMA this one and order another one. I want to make sure I get a good one for this price because this is what's going to have to last me till next year.

Wow.......won't even bench at 507... locks up my computer.... the mouse can move for a few seconds...then pc beeps and I have to restart it.

I won't get into the ethics of rmaing a card that meets stock specs...... my card also won't go past 540 on the core and I've upgraded my cooling to an ati-silencer.

 

[Question]

Anyone know the max you can overclock the gto2 to with stock cooling? I don't want to overdo it and fry the card. I just want it reasonable.. but if not I might have to go with a Zalman VF700-CU. I'd rather not buy a new GPU cooler right now.. but I do want to OC it to a reasonable point. Thanks

 

[Unregistered]

Hey hey I got a Connect3d x800gto card, used flashrom an flashed the moddified gto2 bios on my videocard. And i got 16pipes

So to the question: how do you flash without the newbios thing.... what do you type???

I force flashed the gto2 bios, but if i force flash the old bios back on the card it goes down to 12pipes...

(i read in a earlyer posting that you could flash your original bios back on the card, and still have 16 pipes???? if you flashed without the new bios thingy)





Anyone who wants to modify the c3dx800gto bios to 16 pipes, i can send you the bios

 

[Trevor]

Screens, please?
Benchmarks?
Are you sure they're actually enabled
Just a bit wary.
--Trevor

 

[Trevor]

Anyone know the max you can overclock the gto2 to with stock cooling? I don't want to overdo it and fry the card. I just want it reasonable.. but if not I might have to go with a Zalman VF700-CU. I'd rather not buy a new GPU cooler right now.. but I do want to OC it to a reasonable point. Thanks

Buy an ATi silencer on ebay.. 10 bucks or so.
=)
And, from what I've seen, fluctuates substantially card->card.

 

[Groggy]

Connect3d x800gto

i posted about the flashing of the c3d card.... flashed the gto2_16pipes bios. started ati tool and it said 16.

But when i scanned for artifacts i did see some, couldnt clock at all.... artifacts came and whent is this because of a bad pipe???

Any now i flashed back my original bios and it says 12 pipes, it is ok here with no artifacts, and now i can clock it way up....

3dmark 05:
Out of the box 12p - 4460
saphire gto2 16p bios - 4719

 

[ShadowFlare]

Hey hey I got a Connect3d x800gto card, used flashrom an flashed the moddified gto2 bios on my videocard. And i got 16pipes

So to the question: how do you flash without the newbios thing.... what do you type???

I force flashed the gto2 bios, but if i force flash the old bios back on the card it goes down to 12pipes...

(i read in a earlyer posting that you could flash your original bios back on the card, and still have 16 pipes???? if you flashed without the new bios thingy)

To do that, you need atiflash 3.09, not the modified flashrom. It is available at the bottom of the bios downloads page on this site. It is better than the modified flashrom. You just use the -newbios option when you want to change the number of pipelines when flashing the bios and don't use that option when you don't want the pipelines to change.

I read about this method somewhere and I used it on my X800 GT to attempt to unlock the pipelines, but it didn't work. I read this article about unlocking the pipelines on a GTO2 and decided to get one, but I only used the information about that it can be done, not how to do it. I just decided to use the method that I already knew of, which is what I just mentioned above, and it worked perfectly. I have 16 pipelines, but still using the original bios (with the exception of the pipeline change).


W1zzard, you should add the atiflash 3.09 with -newbios method to the guide, so that users of other X800 GTO cards will know how to attempt unlocking the pipelines if they want to. This question seems to keep coming up in here.

 

[Unregistered]

newegg has the card again for $199!!!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102595

 

[Unregistered]

Buy an ATi silencer on ebay.. 10 bucks or so.
=)
And, from what I've seen, fluctuates substantially card->card.

those silencers go for over $20 now

 

[HousERaT]

Anyone know the max you can overclock the gto2 to with stock cooling? I don't want to overdo it and fry the card. I just want it reasonable.. but if not I might have to go with a Zalman VF700-CU. I'd rather not buy a new GPU cooler right now.. but I do want to OC it to a reasonable point. Thanks

Mine went up to about 530/600 with the stock cooling. Ironically my clocks didn't go much higher with my silencer but the temps went down. I think I have a weak card. I've seen other people with much higher clocks still on stock cooling.

 

[Groggy]

Anyone that can tell me axactly how to use atiflash.... what to write (commands) when flashing -newbios or not????

My head really stops when i see anything in dos mode. :shadedshu

Anyone who can tell me what a broke pipeline does, can you see it??? is it artifacts on the same spot or can they move around???

Can you do a 3dbenchmark with a broken one???

The GTO (connect3d x800gto) card has a 64kb bios, almost every other 16P bios has 58kb???
Is it possible to use one of the smaller ones or is it a big no no

 

[ShadowFlare]

Anyone that can tell me axactly how to use atiflash.... what to write (commands) when flashing -newbios or not????

My head really stops when i see anything in dos mode. :shadedshu

Anyone who can tell me what a broke pipeline does, can you see it??? is it artifacts on the same spot or can they move around???

Can you do a 3dbenchmark with a broken one???

The GTO (connect3d x800gto) card has a 64kb bios, almost every other 16P bios has 58kb???
Is it possible to use one of the smaller ones or is it a big no no

The commands for flashing to enable pipelines using atiflash 3.09 are as follows (where x800gto.bin is the name you save your current bios as and x850xt.bin is the bios you are flashing to):

atiflash -s 0 x800gto.bin
atiflash -f -p 0 x850xt.bin -newbios
atiflash -f -p 0 x800gto.bin

The -newbios option will not work with atiflash versions below 3.x and will not work with any version of flashrom.

Note: In Windows make sure you give the bios file a name 8 characters or shorter before the .bin or .rom, so that you can use it properly in DOS.

If your pixel pipelines are unlockable with only flashing the bios, that will do it. When using another card's bios, you risk having it not work because of an incompatible bios, but this way you still use your same bios, except with 16 pipelines enabled. If it is successful at unlocking them, the only thing that could go wrong is that the unlocked pipelines are defective. BTW, this is equivalent to using the modified flashrom to flash the bios then using the normal flashrom program to flash back your original bios, but it only requires one program rather than two.

As far as I know, the size of the bios shouldn't really matter as long as it matches the type of gpu you have and the memory the card has.

 

[Bushwacker]

I can tell you that I was able to successfully flash a Connect3D X800GTO VIVO PCIe (R423 based, 2.0ns RAM) with a Powercolor X800XT BIOS. My video card has now 16 pipes and default 500 /500 MHz.
I'm still able to o/c to 540 / 540 at 76°C under load with stock cooling. At this setting I got 6.366 3D'05.

 

[Dr.D]

Well I am ordering this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102595

 

[Megatron]

Think Ill hang onto my x800gt for the time being and watch what happens with the x1600pro ect. My board seems to do better than my review sites in that Ive had it at 580 artifact free and 595 was too in colder weather. Apparently the memory has more bandwidth than needed so its only worth clocking the GPU.

 

[Pentium D]

God...

newegg has raised the price to $299!!!!! Luckily, I ordered it just before they do that....what a shock...